Every day, millions of people rely on mass transportation to safely transport them to and from their destinations. For example, many children rely on school buses to transport them to and from school. However, all too often, a school bus driver makes the last stop for the day and returns the bus to the school bus yard only to discover that a child has failed to unload at the appropriate bus stop and is still on the bus. Although this situation is undesirable because of the unnecessary delay and the concern caused to parents, it can be remedied by a return trip to the child's bus stop (or home) to properly deliver the child. Far worse is the result when the school bus driver does not discover that a child has fallen asleep on the bus, and the school bus is parked in a yard overnight with the child still onboard. As a result, a child can be left alone on the bus in the yard for hours, with the parents experiencing much greater concern, believing that their child might have been abducted after getting off the bus. Clearly, it would be desirable to ensure that every school bus driver does a post-trip inspection of the school bus immediately after completing the driver's route, e.g., after the bus is returned to the yard where it is kept during the day or overnight, to determine if any child remains on the bus.
There is another reason why vehicle inspections are important. Many adults rely on mass transit systems, such as trains and buses, to transport them to and from work. Tragically, a terrorist attack that consisted of a series of ten explosions occurring onboard four commuter trains left approximately 200 people dead and more than 1,800 people wounded in Madrid, Spain, when bombs packed in sports bags left on the trains detonated. It would be desirable to check for packages left on vehicles after each trip is completed, to ensure that any suspicious package is identified and appropriate measures taken. Such an inspection would also be useful in detecting packages inadvertently left on the vehicle, thereby facilitating their return to the rightful owner.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,874,891 (Lowe) discloses one prior art device that seeks to remind the driver to check for remaining passengers or articles left behind on a bus and to perform an inspection of the rear door on a bus to ensure that it is working properly. The system uses the existing wiring of the school bus and is coupled to the ignition, lighting, and rear door switches of the bus. When the driver turns on the ignition of the bus at the start of a run, the system enters a stand-by state until a light activating switch has been turned on and off. At this point, the system is in an armed state while the driver completes the run. When the run is complete and the driver turns off the ignition switch, the system enters an alarm state, and a buzzer sounds immediately. The buzzer is silenced only when the driver walks to the back of the bus and opens and closes the rear door. It is expected that while moving to the rear of the bus, the driver will inspect for people still on the bus, or articles that have been left behind. However, this system only alerts those who are within hearing distance of the alarm sounding inside the bus and does so immediately upon the vehicle being powered off at any time, even before a run is completed. Furthermore, if the vehicle is parked alongside other buses, it is not apparent which bus has an alarm activated, since there is no unique identification of the bus in which the alarm is active. And the alarm can only be silenced by manually engaging or disengaging a switch to open and close the rear door, which may not require the driver to walk all the way to the rear of the bus, since the rear door is a few rows in front of the last row of seating in the bus. The disclosed system is only usable on a bus with a rear door, which most school buses do not include. Thus, it is apparent that the prior art does not teach or suggest a complete solution to the problems discussed above.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a method and apparatus for performing an inspection usable for any type of vehicle that provides an alarm not only to the driver but also to those outside the vehicle, and only at a location where the inspection should occur. This alarm should be provided if it is determined that the inspection has not been performed before a predefined event has occurred. In addition, the method and apparatus should provide a unique identification to monitoring personnel of any vehicle where the required inspection apparently has not been completed.